Ireland is an industry for a small army of American academics and their annual conference is where they display the fruits of their research. It is awe-inspiring but the professors also invite some Irish colleagues along to share their scholarship.
Thus, Declan Kiberd of UCD allegedly cut short an alligator hunt in the Everglades to give a hard-hitting "short history of Irish criticism". He deplored the "torpor" of departments of English in Irish universities, where research, up to fairly recently, was regarded by the dons as a "German perversion". The American dons laughed appreciatively. Now, thank goodness, the Irish academics are deep into post-colonial exegesis of our writers.
This year's American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS) has more than 100 lectures and events spread over three days in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Forget about the pool or the beach. This is serious stuff.
True, it began with a poolside reception on Wednesday evening at which MEP and former foreign minister, Mr Gerard Collins, and his wife, on holiday here, showed up with their friend the honorary consul, Mr Patrick Byrne. But after that it was all business.
The range of topics covered is mind-boggling. The theme of this year's conference is "Revolutions and Evolutions" so 1798 gets much attention, but so does the Northern Ireland of the peace agreement as well as the perennial Yeats. But how to convey the baffling diversity of the programme?
You can go from "The Kilrush Clearances during the Great Famine" to "The Bond Between Men: The Erotics of the IRA". This promises to be a star attraction. Or you can listen in on "The Irish in Spanish Florida" and ask questions about "The Fiction and Memoirs of Gerry Adams".
Dogs have played an important part in Gerry's life and fiction, we learned. His beloved Shane was captured by the Brits and turned into an army "war dog" and cried when he caught sight of his master being manhandled in Long Kesh.
Gerry has also written feelingly about a Ballymurphy mongerel called Bo, which loved joining in riots against British soldiers until the day he picked up a nail-bomb. He was buried with military honours, but the British had the indecency to "exhume him for forensic tests". Stacia Bensyl, of Missouri Western State College, in her paper on Adams comments that the fictional and the real Bo "although merely dogs, and mongerels at that, embody loyalty and republicanism. Those are prized qualities in men as well."
Now I see why journalists are always quoting "the dogs in the streets".
Under the "Politics of Irish Culture", Carol Coulter of The Irish Times discussed Dana's presidential election attempt, while Catriona Clear, Galway NUI, talked about the women's magazines and women's pages in newspapers between 1921 and 1961. She deplored that in a still largely agricultural country of that time, there was an "almost total exclusion of rural/farming women" from the women's sections. But Ann Kennedy's "Diary of a Farmer's Wife" in The Irish Times was "an honourable exception". The Irish Press and the Independent "rarely if ever had articles on poultry and butter-making".
Elizabeth Cullingford, of the University of Texas, read a paper on "Cowboys and Indians as Political Metaphors in Contemporary Irish Culture" illustrated with clips from John Wayne movies. Her conclusion was that the Irish are both cowboys and Indians, although we really look down on the Indians as losers.
For the United Irishmen, women figured in their iconography as "Goddesses, Mothers, Maidens and Maniacs", Mary Helen Thuente of Indiana University explained. The `98 men used to sing a ballad about Ellen O'Moore or Mary Le More which tells the sad tale of how the redcoats stabbed her father to death and burned the family home. They took her to "an outhouse" where "by force they deflower'd sweet Ellen O' Moore". She became a "wild maniac", who could usually be glimpsed on "Cork's rugged border" as "a poor female whose mental disorder, her quick glancing eye and wild aspect betrayed."
It was a relief to turn from Ellen to "Irish visions of the material world". Sean Farrell Moran, of Oakland University, ranged over Plato, Aristotle, the Gnostics, Tertullian, Aquinas, Brendan the Navigator, John Scotus Erigena and Bishop Berkeley to prove that the Irish excel at seeing the spiritual in the material world.
"Van Morrison of all people has commented that his attraction to the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh is in Kavanagh's finding transcendent reality in the mundanity of everyday life. Many critics have commented upon Heaney's sense of the spiritual significance of everyday things," said Mr Farrell Moran, who has roots in Bailieboro, Co Cavan.
The role of the Catholic Church is being discussed by those pioneering researchers into Irish and Vatican archives, Emmet Larkin, David Millar and Lawrence McCaffrey.
Medbh McGuckian is reading her poetry. The Northern Ireland peace process is being dissected by Paul Arthur, Andrew Wilson and John McGarry, and there are still papers to be read on Neil Jordan, John Montague and Derek Mahon. Bruce Steward, of the University of Coleraine, will expound on "Irish Studies in Cyberspace". And don't forget "Reproductive Politics and Irish Nationalism" and "Gender and the Famine".
Maybe then we'll get to the beach.